New Release from Psalm Zero

Profound Lore Records is thrilled to present the ambitious second album from New York City-based PSALM ZERO.

With Stranger To Violence, PSALM ZERO takes the aesthetics, poetics, and spirit established with their 2014-released The Drain debut, and blows those elements up into an epic work of wide-screen drama. After two years of anticipation built by the gradual episodic release of the Birthright Trilogy of video/cassette singles, as well as a series of personnel shifts, the Queens, New York-based outfit led by songwriter/vocalist/producer Charlie Looker finally delivers the next installment of a wholly unique vision of heavy music. Pummeling drum machine, lush swirling synths, razor-sharp guitar (courtesy of former member Andrew Hock), and grinding bass, all provide the dramatic backdrop for Looker’s crooning baritone voice. Comparisons as diverse as Godflesh, Katatonia, and Depeche Mode have all been used in attempts to describe Psalm Zero’s completely singular brand of art-metal. The cover art for the album was created by Zev Deans.

A monolithic, cinematic, start-to-finish musical experience with immense crossover potential, which blurs genre boundaries at every turn, as demented as it is socially relevant, Stranger To Violence promises to bring together fans from across multiple different scenes and orientations, and further proves that there is truly nothing out there like PSALM ZERO.

While Stranger To Violence retains, and in some ways even strengthens, PSALM ZERO’s roots in extreme metal, these seven new songs feature massive pop hooks, soaring choruses catchier and more emotionally direct than any of the band’s prior work. With harsh vocals now less frequent and only reserved for the highest ecstatic peaks, these melody-driven songs embody an accessible songcraft seldom heard in today’s metal landscape. The production style has evolved dramatically as well. In contrast to the band’s original murkier, more lo-fi texture, this album presents a far more detailed, crisp, and colorful, three-dimensional sound world of synths, samples, and percussive electronics.

Lyrically, Stranger to Violence is a far more political direction for PSALM ZERO. Looker has extended the scope of his writing outside of the purely personal and existential realm, into a more social, global, real-world critical engagement. Without preaching a strict agenda, and without constituting a unitary “concept album”, the new record is tied together by several different thematic strands: drug addiction, global financial crisis, Western imperialism, and Jewish identity. All of these themes are interwoven throughout all seven of the songs, interrelating and overlapping differently at different times. The album’s single “Not Guilty” features a video directed by Zev Deans (whose many other credits include Portal and Behemoth), filmed around the alleyways and courthouses of the band’s hometown of New York.

PSALM ZERO was formed in New York in 2012 by Charlie Looker after disbanding his band Extra Life, enlisting guitarist Andrew Hock (formerly of Castevet). Their debut album The Drain was released in 2014 by Profound Lore Records, and was followed by tours of the Northeast US and Europe, which included Impetus Festival (Switzerland) and South By Southwest (Pitchfork stage). In 2015, they began the gradual release of The Birthright Trilogy, a series of cassette singles on Irish label, Black Mass Productions, with accompanying music videos. They also toured the Northeast and Canada, working with a series of live drummers before current drummer Keith Abrams of Kayo Dot. In 2016 PSALM ZERO parted ways with Hock, with Looker taking over on guitar, and recruiting Ron Varod (guitarist for Kayo Dot) to handle bass duties.